This ceased to be when Moldova declared its independence, in early nineties, reverting the official language to the Latin alphabet.
Saying that Moldavian is a dialect of Romanian is sort of an overstatement, because besides a couple of regional words and phrases imported from Russian, it's the same as literary Romanian in writing and when spoken we have the same accent used in the region of Romania that borders Moldova (and that's bigger than Moldova itself, we even call that region Moldova and when we refer to Moldova, the country, we're calling it Basarabia).
Romanians are also the largest population group living in Moldova. This country is basically a part of Romania that was taken from us. Unfortunately they don't want to unite with us, because many Romanians there forgot that they are Romanians or consider themselves to be Moldovans. We also help them whenever we can and we also represent their door to EU, since obtaining Romanian citizenship is easy for Moldovans. Unfortunately having them close to our hearts went without returned favours. But whatever, if they want to be Moldavian-speaking Moldovans, living in Moldova, to each his own.